There was a sudden harshness to her thought.
“Kern, you’re a soft fool!” Kua said. “Did you think you could reach Paradise without earning it? Whether you help us or not, you’ve got to face danger before you’ll find your place in this world, or any other. I don’t think you can manage without us. And we need your help, too. Together, we may still lose the battle. Separately, there’s no hope for any of us. We know! The Mountain may be a mutation as far beyond us as we are beyond the animals. But we’ve got to fight.”
Her voice blurred suddenly, faded to a thin drone. The starlit hill and the faces before him swirled and melted in Kern’s sleeping sight. He struggled for a moment against intangible danger—something formless and full of strong malevolence. He saw—what was it? A vast, coiling Something like a ribbon of fire, moving lazily in darkness and aware of him—terribly aware.
Far off in the void he felt the quiver of fright in a mind he knew—Byrna’s mind. But he lost the contact instantly, and then someone was shaking him by the shoulder and saying something in insistent, guttural tones.
He opened his eyes.
IV
Evil Mountain
In his vision, the coiling flame had left so brilliant an image upon his eyelids that for an instant he could see nothing but the blue-green scar of after-sight swimming upon his vision. Then that faded and he was staring up into Gerd’s darkly handsome young face.
Kern struggled to sit up, beating his wings a little to help him rise. The gust stirred Kern’s red hair and sent motes dancing in the beam of sunlight falling across the bed. Kern in the aftermath of amazement and terror forgot to dissemble his knowledge of the winged men’s tongue. The simple syllables raced off his lips.
“Gerd, Gerd, you’ve got to listen to me! I’ve been finding out things I didn’t suspect until now. Let me up. The townspeople are coming!”
Gerd put a hard palm against his chest.
“Not so fast. You seem to have learned our language in your sleep. No, stay there.” His voice rose. “Elje!”
She was a moment or two in coming, and Gerd stood back with his hand on his dagger and his pale, suspicious eyes unswerving as he watched Kern. When Elje came, bright-faced in the morning sun, her ashen braids wound in a coronet that glistened against the high arch of her wings, he spoke without taking his eyes from Kern.
“Our guest awoke this morning with a strangely fluent knowledge of speech. I told you before of the danger from spies, Elje.”
“All right, I do know more of your language than I pretended,” Kern admitted. “I just learned it faster than you believed, that’s all. That doesn’t matter now. Do you know the townspeople are coming to attack?”
Gerd bent forward swiftly, half-open wings hovering above him in the sunlight.
“How do you know that? You are a spy!”
“Let him talk, Gerd,” Elje said. “Let him talk.”
Kern talked. …
In the end, he could see that they did not yet fully trust him. It was not surprising, for the tale would have bewildered anyone. But the prospect of an advancing army was enough to divide their thoughts.
“If I were a spy, would I warn you they were coming?” Kern demanded, seeing their dubious glances fixed on him at the end of his story.
“It isn’t the army you’d be spying for,” Gerd said reluctantly.
“Your other world—Earth,” Elje murmured, her eyes searching Kern’s. “If that were true, it could explain some things. But we know of no other worlds.”
Briefly Kern thought that it might be easier for one of Elje’s culture to believe in the existence of other worlds than for a denizen of some more sophisticated civilization. The people of this winged race had not yet closed their minds to all they could not see. It was not a race so sure of its own omnipotence that it denied all unfamiliar things existence.
“How could I hurt you now?” Kern said. “Why should I warn you, if I were on their side?”
“It’s the Mountain,” Elje said surprisingly. “Why do you suppose we kept you here in this bare room, without furnishings, without anything you could build into a weapon? Or do you know?”
Bewildered, he shook his head.
“We were not sure if you were a slave to the Mountain. If you were, a coil of wire, a bit of iron—anything—would have been dangerous to us in your hands.” Her eyes were questioning.
Again Kern shook his head. Gerd began to speak, his voice faintly derisive.
“A long story and an evil one. Perhaps you know it. At any rate, we’re the only free people in this world. Oh, there may be a few others, but not many, and they don’t live long. The Mountain is jealous of its slaves. Aside from our group, all the rest of mankind belongs to the Mountain. All!”
“This Mountain?” Kern said. “What is it?”
Gerd shrugged his red wings.
“Who knows? Demon—god. If we ever had a history, no one knows it now. No legend goes back beyond the coming of the Mountain. We only know that it has always been there, and from it, whispers float out to men in their sleep, and they become slaves to the whisper. Something happens in their minds. For the most part they live as they choose, in their cities. But sometimes that voice comes again, and then they’re mindless, doing as the Mountain bids them.”
“We don’t know what the Mountain is,” Elje said. “But we know that it’s intelligent. It can guide men’s hands to make weapons, when there’s a need for weapons. And it can send out storms, such as the one in which we found you. Not for a long, long while has there been a storm out of the Mountain. If you’re not a spy, how do
